Yemisi Izuora
The loss arising from volume gas flared by oil companies in Nigeria has been put to $63.345 million (about N23.438 billion).
The companies reportedly flared 20.50 billion standard cubic feet, SCF, of gas in April 2017.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, report, indicated that the volume of gas flared in April declined by 4.52 percent when compared to the 21.47 billion SCF flared in the preceding month.
The NNPC puts the price of natural gas at $3.09 per 1,000 SCF, while the dollar is currently exchanged at an average of N370 to a dollar.
However, the volume of gas flared in the month under review, appreciated by 22.75 per cent when compared to 16.70 billion SCF flared in the same period in 2017.
Giving a breakdown of total gas commercialisation and utilisation in the month of April, the NNPC stated that out of the 242.26 billion SCF of gas supplied in the month, a total of 141.51 billion SCF was commercialised, comprising of 33.02 billion SCF and 108.49 billion SCF for the domestic and export market respectively.
This, according to the NNPC, translates to an average daily supply of 1.1 billion SCF per day of gas to the domestic market and 3.616 billion SCF per day of gas supplied to the export market.
“This implies that 58.42 percent of the total gas produced was commercialised while the balance of 41.58 per cent was either re-injected, used as upstream fuel gas or flared. Gas flare rate was 8.46 percent for the month of March 2017, that is 683.44 million SCF per day compared with average gas flare rate of 9.67 per cent, that is, 682.66 million SCF per day, for the period April 2016 to April 2017,” the report said.
In the domestic gas category, 20.15 billion SCF was supplied to the power sector; 12.87 billion SCF was supplied to industries.
In the export category, 0.72 billion SCF was supplied to the West African Gas Pipeline Company; 5.72 billion was utilised by the Escravos Gas to Liquid project; while Natural Gas Liquid/Liquefied Petroleum Gas, NGL/LPG, and Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas, NLNG, utilised 3.22 billion SCF and 98.84 billion SCF respectively.
In the category of non-commercialised gas, the report stated that 68.36 billion SCF of gas was re-injected; 11.89 billion SCF was used as fuel gas; while 20.50 billion SCF was flared.
The report also revealed that in the first four months of the year, a total of 87.16 billion SCF of gas was flared, translating to a loss of $269.32 million, about N99.65 billion to the country.
This was in comparison to 79.51 billion SCF of gas flared in the first four months of 2016, translating to a loss of $245.686 million, about N90.904 billion. However, in the last four months of 2016, from September to December 2016, 90.08 billion SCF of gas was flared, equivalent to a loss of $278.347 million, about N102.99 billion.